Glasgow Film Festival celebrates successful fourth year

The 4th Glasgow Film Festival concluded on Sunday evening with the UK premiere of the Oscar-nominated comedy Lars And The Real Girl starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Mortimer. The Festival has recorded another rise in audience attendance with final figures expected to reach 20,000 admissions.

The eleven-day event has seen sell out screenings across the programme from the world premiere of Paul Andrew William's gleeful romp The Cottage to the documentary Joy Division, Uruguay comedy The Pope's Toilet and the silver anniversary screening of Local Hero.

"We have been thrilled by the audience response to this year's programme," said festival co-director Allison Gardner. "There has been a real excitement about the Festival and adventurous audiences willing to embrace a diverse range of cinema from Hollywood blockbusters to our focus on East European films."

The retrospective devoted to Hollywood icon Bette Davis has been particularly successful with sell-out screenings of Davis classics like Jezebel, All About Eve, Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? and The Letter which was introduced by Barry Norman.

Highlights of the Festival include family favourite The Spiderwick Chronicles, independent Scottish feature The Inheritance, Shotgun Stories, award-winning British drama Unrelated and comedy Charlie Bartlett.

"The Festival is continuing to build its international reputation as an event that brings the best of world cinema to Glasgow. Guests have arrived from all over the globe and been universally impressed by the warmth of the welcome and how informed our audiences are," said Allan Hunter, co-director of the Festival. "The success of this year's Festival has only inspired us to continue the development of the Glasgow Film Festival as a world class event."

The Festival Directors also announced that the 2009 Festival will run from 12 to 22 February.